Huawei TalkBand B2: Specs, release date, price and more

The Huawei TalkBand B2, the successor to 2014's B1 flop, was officially announced over in Barcelona at MWC recently.

Here's all the important info on Huawei's activity tracking sequel....

Huawei TalkBand B2: Design

The TalkBand B2 is a wearable that, like its predecessor, offers both fitness tracking and Bluetooth headset functionality. It has one major advantage over the original, though – it actually looks pretty swish.

The black one (the TUP version) may look like an indistinguishable chunk of plastic and rubber but the silver and gold models – both of which feature a nice leather strap – are great looking, mostly because the display blends the colour of the design.

At 11.88mm thick, it's not exactly svelte but it's slimmer than its predecessor, although it's a bit heavier at between 30 and 33g depending on what materials you opt for.

Huawei TalkBand B2: Hardware

That flash looking display is a 0.73-inch, 128 x 88, PMOLED touchscreen one and Huawei are promising a battery life of 5 days from the 95mAh power pack. It's a life source capable of 7 hours of talk time as well.

Yep, talk time. This is a Bluetooth headset, don't forget. If you get an incoming call you can simply pop the module out of the strap and into your lughole. On that front it boasts Bluetooth 4.1 tech and a dual-mic noise cancelling setup.

The Chinese company claims the TalkBand B2 will automatically detect certain activities, such as running, walking and cycling and then sleep detection is automatic too.

There's a Huawei Health Platform app (iOS and Android) where you can see all of your tracked stats and, thanks to Huawei and Jawbone teaming up, you should be able to sync all the data to the latter's popular UP platform.

Smartphone notifications are also present and correct although Huawei hasn't yet revealed if the alerts extend beyond texts, emails and calendar alerts to third party updates from the likes of WhatsApp or Twitter.

Huawei TalkBand B2: Price and launch

The B2 charges via a regular Micro USB port, which is nice in a wearable world dominated by proprietary charging accessories, and is both dust and water resistant: IP57 for the black-one (1m of submersion), IP55 (light spray) for the metallic ones.